The Paragon Hotel Page 11

  In the meantime, in between time.

  Transaction complete, Officer Overton waves the truncheon. “Do you see what you’re dealing with now, Miss James? What level of people these are?”

  “Yes, it’s not at all what I expected,” I answer timidly.

  “Well, it’s a fine thing that you’re writing an article about the place, then, isn’t it?” he scrapes, towering over me. “You can expose the sickness that lives inside every one of these animals.”

  “That isn’t—”

  “What a little nigger lover like you wanted to write? You wanted to say they were perfect angels, didn’t you? Rough around the edges, but the intentions, God, the noble intentions. Or did you want to make a name for yourself, poking your nose into speakeasies and dice joints? If you so much as dream of crawling away from this hotel without an article to your name, a real one, I’ll see that every single one of these mongrels pays for it.”

  “Officer Overton,” I state with harsh spinster clarity, “you can rest assured that there will be an article forthcoming. As to whether or not the Portland police department comes off well in it, I likewise assure you that I am extremely fair-minded and not given to flights of fancy. You will be treated precisely as you deserve.”

  “That’ll be nice, then. You’ll be writing about how I saved a pack of degenerates from the ruination of alcohol.” Overton finally settles his helmet where it belongs, on his head, producing a blinding grin. “Afternoon, everyone. Oh, and Mrs. Meader? You can bet I’ll be checking into these ‘incidents’ of yours again. Soon.”

  ◆ Eight ◆

  Klansman Brentneau, who hails from Denver, Colorado Klan, was a visitor in our klavern and he gave a wonderful account of the trials that his Klan were passing through and finished by telling us he thought Oregon just about the livest state in the Union.

  —MINUTES FROM THE MEETING OF THE LA GRANDE, OREGON, KU KLUX KLAN, February 27, 1923

  We’ve gathered in a snug parlor with dark-paneled walls and a club-style table. The sun is probably setting as Dr. Pendleton stitches Max’s head wound, but the skies still wear a grey blindfold.

  “What the hell were you thinking, having Davy down there?” Blossom demands. She’s been pacing for ten minutes, skinny arms ferociously akimbo.

  “Language, child!” Mavereen chides.

  “I don’t give a single flying fuck about my language, and I certainly have no intention of tempering it—there are circumstances requiring heightened speech and I’m not so very keen on putting this one into blank verse, so kindly answer the goddamned question!” she cries.

  “You watch yourself, miss,” Mavereen breathes.

  “Aw, hey, calm down there, crackerjack,” Max says soothingly to Blossom. “Davy’s fine. He was down there on account of he was delivering more peanuts. Rooster was on guard duty, warned Mavereen, she came running like a Kentucky Derby favorite, we cleared out the joint with Doc, and when we turned around Davy was still there, like. It was an accident.”

  “An accident is misspelling psychology or nicking yourself shaving,” the singer growls.

  “And just what did y’all think you were doing parading Miss James here over every inch of God’s creation?” Mavereen counters icily.

  “Showing our guest a bit of Southern hospitality. I’d be ever so consternated to learn you’ve never heard of the practice.”

  “Again, we don’t need your sarcasm, Blossom,” Jenny Kiona objects. She sits with her pretty chestnut face framed by her fingertips, staring down at a jumble of notes.

  “No, we need another one of your delightfully effective lectures or sermons or mixed-race ice-cream socials, or articles for The Advocate.”

  “I am not the enemy here!” Jenny cries, slamming her fists on either side of her paperwork.

  “Jenny’s right,” says Rooster. He turns out to be an enormous charcoal-colored fellow, with a bald head and a rhino’s posture and a voice that makes you think God just dropped by for a stern word. His button-down is scarlet, his expensive suit black. He speaks slowly but with tremendous authority. “Who’s the enemy, Blossom?”

  Blossom’s remarkable face corkscrews into an expression of profound disgust.

  “The Ku Klux Klan.”

  She sinks into an armchair in the corner.

  “Enough said,” Rooster pronounces.

  “The Ku Klux Klan?” I marvel from my uncertain position hovering before the fireplace.

  The silence roars. Dr. Pendleton snips off the thread holding Max’s brow together, and Max claps him on the shoulder.

  “Come and sit, sugar. You’re turning green.”

  Mavereen pulls out a chair and I take it. Head full of flaming crosses and the silhouettes of lynching trees.

  “I’ll tell you a story, Miss James.” She lights a cigarette. “I was born Mavereen Johnson in Moultrie, Georgia. Them’s some of the biggest former slaveholders in Colquitt County—the Johnsons, I mean. Plenty of their livestock took the name, just like Ezekiel Johnson, my daddy. Now, some Negroes back then could have told you tales about bondage that would nigh about peel your mind clean. Time as a house slave was horsewhipped for not noticing the hall clock had stopped running. Time as a buck was told if he didn’t pick himself a ‘wife,’ they’d sell his frail old mamma, and the only girl available was all of twelve. Not my daddy, though. The Johnson slaves worked up a sweat, but they were kept in ham and fresh butter, clothed like quality, and after the war, there’s many a one stayed and toiled for good wages. Like my pa.”

  “Give me a crust with my freedom instead of a feast with shackles,” Jenny murmurs.

  “It’s Mavereen’s life,” Rooster intones. “Let her tell it.”

  “I was born free in eighteen sixty-seven, married lucky in eighteen eighty-five to a good man name of Richard Meader what supplied a fair amount of the local produce.” Mavereen studies a smoke wisp. “I knew every soul in that town and every Christmas, I sang carols up at the Johnson estate and they treated me like family, and still I wasn’t content. Time came when the itch got too strong—Richard and me, we sold the farm and headed for a land where we’d never been slaves. Richard applied for fifty-six jobs in Portland, finally ended up cleaning toilets at the courthouse. Accidentally crossed shadows with a white man and got slapped in the face for it once. He died of pneumonia in a fever sweat after two years here, dreaming of sunshine.”

  Blossom bites her fist. Dr. Pendleton polishes his glasses. Rooster regards the ceiling, while Jenny Kiona chews the end of her pen and Max takes long pulls on a cigarette. I wonder at the practice of abusing anybody different from you, Italians so strongly preferring to abuse each other.

  “They were well used to coloreds in Georgia,” Mavereen continues. “But I thought there was someplace different. Someplace pure.”

  “What could be purer than the virgin West?” Blossom mutters.

  Mavereen swivels to face us. “There’s noplace pure on God’s earth. And the difference here is that they don’t even know how to speak to a colored. Our kind don’t exist except as a stain on the community. And that is where the KKK comes into it.”

  “There are plenty of crusaders in Portland who don’t feel that way,” Jenny counters, chin landing on her palm.

  “True enough. And plenty more who do.”

  “To describe us as a stain is oversimplifying white rhetoric,” Jenny insists. “The KKK purports to uphold standards of sobriety, Protestantism, and civic prosperity. There are far more disadvantaged blacks here than well-to-do ones, so when they picture us, they see poverty and struggle.”

  “You aren’t black,” Rooster observes. His specialty seems to be the statement of facts.

  “No, I’m red, which is worse. By elevating our economic situation, thereby proving our social worth, we can begin to build more bridges.”

  “You build the bridges, I’ll bury the cat
s,” Blossom drawls.

  Jenny flushes. “Intermingling between the races will help to break down the walls between us. Colored people comprise less than one percent of the Portland population. Ask Max about Brooklyn.”

  “Not gonna lie, I’m about as intermingled as they come. That don’t mean I can take my sisters for tea at the Ritz,” Max notes.

  “I’m talking about gradual enlightenment.”

  “When in human history has that ever worked?” Dr. Pendleton demands.

  “I’m making actual efforts. What are you doing?”

  “Hey, hey, efforts might mean something different to the doc,” Max objects.

  “Like what? Getting drunk earlier than we do?”

  “Like patching people back together while bullets whiz over your noggin and then seeing it every night in your sleep for the rest of your life, kid,” Max snaps. “We ain’t sitting on our thumbs here.”

  Quiet settles among them, seeps into the curls of the crown molding.

  “I want to stop sitting on my thumbs,” I blurt out. “However I can. Please let me.”

  Naturally, everyone forgot about me.

  Dr. Pendleton returns his spectacles to his face and goes back to resembling a spotty bullfrog. “I’ll bite, if only for a laugh. How?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ve some experience with malicious neighborhood organizations.” I glance from Max to Blossom. “I want to help.”

  “Because you feel guilty?” Jenny supposes shrewdly.

  “Or because I grew up surviving the Mafia. Take your pick.”

  A spark of approval appears in Mavereen’s eyes.

  “I agreed to research an article,” I muse. “Actually, I threw down the gauntlet and spit on it. Who’s to say I shouldn’t do just that?”

  “What sorta article?” Max questions. “You gonna kiss the Portland PD’s heinie in print like Overton wants?”

  “It seemed from what Mrs. Meader said that you don’t know who’s been harassing you. What if I start digging? I might not get results, I’m dreadfully aware, but.”

  Dr. Pendleton expels whiskey haze.

  Jenny shoves her writing implement against her brow. “That’s not a bad argument. Miss James—”

  “Do call me Alice.”

  “Is here and possesses something of a vested interest. Why shouldn’t she pull her own weight?”

  Blossom rouses herself enough to chuckle. But whatever sweetly poisoned comment she’s concocting, it evaporates when a rap at the door precedes yet another white intruder.

  Mavereen kills her cigarette with a neat twist. “Mrs. Vaughan. You find us just a mite preoccupied.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” the visitor apologizes. “I mean, I know. I mean . . . yes, I heard.”

  “Evelina, whatever are you doing here?” Blossom rises with all the poise of an infant gazelle.

  Evelina reminds me of a butterfly—petite delicacy and darting movements. It’s awfully difficult to imagine her embroidering. Or reading. Nailing any of the sitting-down maneuvers, really, which seems queer since she must be the founder of Mrs. Evelina Vaughan’s Weekly Betterment meetings. Her hair is coarse, voluminous, pinned atop her head like an antique Gibson Girl, and an altogether unfair shade of strawberry blond. It’s a veritable glowing pile of marmalade locks. She wears a straight-hanging lavender-check dress with a piqué collar. The heart shape of her face makes for a deep widow’s peak, her skin is smooth as a blank page, her eyes are a March-sky grey, and there’s a glint at the back of them. A fey, feral quality.

  “So nice to see you, Mrs. Vaughan.” Jenny ceases scribbling, smiling broadly.

  “Likewise,” calls Max affably.

  “Hello, all. Max, please tell me you’re all right? Oh, good. That’s good. Blossom, I just . . . I couldn’t,” Mrs. Vaughan says shakily.

  Blossom is already halfway across the room.

  “You heard all about the police tête-à-tête?” she confirms.

  “Yes, Tom told me.” Mrs. Vaughan blinks, and suddenly her lip arcs in a snarl worthy of the deepest, darkest woods. “Blossom, when I picture that horrid bully harassing you all—”

  “Oh, honey, you’re too good to us. What you and I are going to do is picture it over a nice strong drink,” Blossom proposes. “Come along, we’ll order three or four dozen oysters.”

  “Hold the elevator, would you?” Jenny requests. “I’ve nearly completed the guest list for Miss Jackson’s Benevolent Tea Soiree next month, and it’ll only take Mrs. Vaughan three flights up to fix the seating arrangements.”

  In the wake of Mrs. Vaughan’s faltering flutters, Blossom is about as poised as a clock tower again when the three women leave, a palpable relief. Dr. Pendleton walks with great gravitas to a nearby cabinet, selects a cobalt vase without any flowers in it, pours an arm-straining draft from this hidden cache into a tumbler, and exits.

  “Saints alive,” Mavereen mutters. “Fine. We’ll parley more when everyone’s less shook up. Max, are you all right?”

  “Never better.”

  “You sure enough have a talent for trouble, child.”

  “Ain’t it the truth.”

  “Please explain . . . whatever else Miss James here wants to know, I ain’t got the sense nor the stomach presently. Seeing as she’s so itchy to help. Rooster, we’re back on duty.”

  “Never was off it,” Rooster concurs.

  They depart, shutting the door.

  “Well.” I exhale.

  “How do you like them apples?” Max ruminates, setting his elbows on the table.

  “Bit mealy. Care for something to wash them down?”

  Max nods, and I head for the cabinet to repeat Dr. Pendleton’s procedure. When I deliver the refreshments, I perch on the table in high flapper fashion, sliding off my eyeglasses. Wishing I were in my mixed-lace tea dress, dozens of panels of pure ivory stems and petals twining together. This close, the gash on his head looks dreadful, though he isn’t sweating over it.

  Second thought, maybe a nurse’s uniform, all bleached white with petal-pink lip color.

  “Here’s how,” I say. “Have you been missing me dreadfully?”

  We clink as I reflect over my capacity to pose wildly inappropriate questions.

  “Aw, sure.” Max studies me. “Nice schoolmarm getup.”

  “You’re too kind. Explain your abandonment of the Paragon’s population.”

  “I got a cabin here. Away from the hoi polloi. When I’m in Oregon, I maintain it, oust any possums. Listen to the trees when I get the chance.”

  “You are a poet, sir.”

  “Nah. Just a trench boy what likes forests that ain’t shooting at him.”

  “Give a girl a tour sometime?”

  He narrows bronze eyes at me, speculative and open—dare I even say hungry?—and I can feel my pulse in my throat.

  “Who was that Mrs. Vaughan? She’s ever so striking.”

  Max squints. “Pal of Blossom’s. She was born here, heads up just about every charitable concern in town—rights for everyone, grub for everyone, school for everyone. Completely cuckoo. Oh, and married to the Chief of Police, Tom Vaughan, that there’s how her ear’s so close to the ground.”

  “My. Quelque intrigue. Is he anything like his intrepid staff?”

  “Nah, he means well. Washes behind his ears, wouldn’t speed up if he saw a stray in the middle of the road.”

  “A model citizen, then. But wait, I did wonder . . . why did Overton muscle you specifically during the raid?”

  A dark smile curls Max’s lip. “Once when I was in town, he’d been sampling the contraband and came on too strong to Blossom. Said as he’d pay for a private concert, like, and if she told him no, it weren’t no skin offa his nose for it to be free. I told him if he tried anything fresh with my friend, I’d guarantee all of Mult
nomah County knew he was a nigger lover. It was swell.”

  The laugh that emerges yanks my stitches. But it’s still the niftiest sensation in days. “Your tastes are peculiar, my good man. Now. Deliver unto me the situation, per Mavereen’s request.”

  Max taps at the edge of his tumbler. “Started last year. Pamphlets, auditorium speeches, articles in the ’papes. America first! Over and over till you heard it in your sleep. Figured it for a fluke, seeing as how you could round up all the Negroes in the state and fit ’em at the same Sunday service. But it’s sticking, see? They’s after the Japanese and Catholics mostly. But the Paragon is conspicuous—chafes at ’em regular. ’Course, they don’t outright call for blacks to go home bleeding. It’s all raising dough for temperance, baskets of food for poor whites, lady purity. Kris Kringle Kristmas shindigs.”

  “Marvelous altruism.”

  “Right up to the dead cats, sister. True enough, we ain’t never caught nobody in the act. But it ain’t a long walk to figure when white robes start popping up between the pines . . .”

  “You’ve seen them?”

  He nods, mouth twitching with disgust. “Sure, plenty often. Sometimes just a coupla good old boys swigging rotgut. Sometimes a regular tent revival.”

  “Davy’s ghosts in the woods,” I realize with a shiver.

  Max shakes his head fondly. “Yep. Musta overheard one of us some weeks back, way I figure it. Kid could make a fairy tale out of a rock.”

  “Oh, rocks are easy as anything. There are far less enchanted objects.”

  He shrugs, conceding.

  When staring goes out of style, I ask, “But what do you think of the old bird’s idea? Writing an article? Asking around? Snooping, to use the accurate moniker?”

  Max pushes to his feet. “It ain’t baked, not by half, but then again you just put it in the oven. Worth a try. This shit’s got me up nights and no mistake. Anyhow, I’m for the bathhouse, Alice. Ain’t no getting actually clean on a cross-country train, and I’m due on the eleven ten sleeper tomorrow. Can you make it back to your bunk?”